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Archive Watch: T.C. Boyle’s Papers Go to Texas

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin announced today that it has acquired the papers of yet another significant contemporary literary figure: the novelist and short-story writer T.C. Boyle. The author of 22 books of fiction, including The Road to Wellville, Tortilla Curtain, World’s End, and When the Killing’s Done, Mr. Boyle is a professor of English at the University of Southern California. At Texas, his papers will join those of David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, Denis Johnson, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Bruce Sterling, among many others whose archives are housed at the center.

“I am very pleased and honored to have my papers safely ensconced at the Ransom Center so that they may be preserved and made available to scholars,” Mr. Boyle said in the announcement. “With such an archive, there is always the danger of damage or even destruction, especially when the papers are stored in filing cabinets and cardboard boxes in the basement of a very old house. I am vastly relieved to know that they are now safe.”

The Boyle archive contains a binder of notes, research materials, drafts, and proofs for nearly every one of the author’s published books, according to the Ransom Center. It also features correspondence with notables including Woody Allen, Joyce Carol Oates, and Tobias Wolff.

Image: File folder with notes for The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center.